Issue #130

July 16, 2025

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses and for diplomacy practitioners, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome.

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu | BGregory1@aol.com

Diplomacy’s Public Dimension Archive, Institute for Public Diplomacy & Global Communication, George Washington University

American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

eBook text and paperback here. Kindle and paperback here.

Practitioners, scholars, and journalists are generating an abundance of content on the Trump administration’s threats and adverse actions directed at US diplomacy’s professionals, instruments, and institutions. This list begins again with selected items available on the date of publication categorized by practitioner community.

Scholars and practitioners need to make strong evidence-based conceptual arguments, prioritize compelling roadmaps to transformational change, work to preserve proven practices, engage in collective action, support all legal remedies, and address not only the current upheaval but neglected problems with deeper roots.

US State Department

William H. McRaven, “Soft Power for a Tough World,” July 15, 2025, The Washington Post. | Trygve Olson, “Firing the Front Line: Why Hollowing Out the State Department Destroys American Power,” July 12, 2025, Substack.

Michael Crowley, Greg Jaffe, and Julian E. Barnes, “State Dept. Layoffs Hit Russia and Ukraine Analysts,” July16, 2025, The New York Times. | Hannah Natanson, Ellen Nakashima, and Cate Cadell, “State Department Cuts China Policy Staff Amid Major Overhaul,” July 14, 2025, The Washington Post.

Abigail Williams, “Veteran U.S. Diplomats Baffled After Mass Layoffs at State Department,” July 12, 2025, NBC News. | Michael Crowley, “Rubio’s Cuts at State Department Demote Longtime U.S. Values,” July 11, 2025, The New York Times.

Eric Katz, “Federal Agencies Can Resume Mass Layoffs, Supreme Court Rules,” July 8, 2025, Government Executive. | Sareen Habeshian, “Supreme Court Allows Trump to Fire Federal Workers,” July 7, 2025, Axios. | SCOTUS stay of preliminary injunction. Donald J. Trump et al., v. American Federation of Government Employees, et. al., July 8, 2025.

Jory Heckman, “‘Fidelity’ to Trump Policies Now Part of Criteria for Foreign Service Promotions,” July 3, 2025, Federal News Network.

Dan Spokojny, “The Right Way to Improve Efficiency in the State Department,” June 30, 2025, Substack.

Adam Taylor, John Hudson, and Hannah Natanson, “Morale Craters at State Department as Mass Layoffs Loom,” June 28, 2025, The Washington Post. | Eric Katz, “State Dept. Further Prepares for Mass Layoffs Even as Court Block Remains,” June 25, 2025, Government Executive.

Shawn Dorman, Editor, “Standing Up For Service,” | Talking Points, “Rubio Reorg at State” and “Untenured FSO Appointed to Lead Global Talent Bureau” | Cover Story, “Service Disrupted: What We’ve Lost, First Hand Accounts from the Field,” June 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

Eric Nelson, “A Requiem for Innovation: Bidding Farewell to State’s Office of eDiplomacy,” June 2, 2025, FedScoop.

“Merit Hiring Plan,” Memorandum to Heads and Acting Heads of Departments and Agencies, May 29, 2025, Office of Personnel Management. | Ian Smith, “From DEI to Meritocracy: The Federal Government’s Shift in Hiring Practices,” May 30, 2025, FedSmith.

“Next Steps on Building an America First State Department,” May 29, 2025, Press Statement, US Department of State. | New organization chart for State Department, May 29, 2025.

International Exchanges

Sammy Westfall, “To Study in the U.S. Under Trump, International Students Scrub Their Accounts,” July 9, 2025, The Washington Post.

Stephanie Saul and Alan Binder, “Judge Blocks a Trump Effort to Prevent International Students at Harvard,” June 20, 2025, The New York Times. | Humeyra Pamuk, “US State Dept Resumes Processing Harvard Student Visas After Judges Ruling,” June 9, 2025, Reuters.

Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, and Justine McDaniel, “State Dept. Restarts Student Visa Interviews With Tougher Social Media Rules,” June 18, 2025, The Washington Post.

Leah Sarnoff, “Entire Fulbright Scholarship Board Quits, Citing Trump Admin Actions,” June 11, 2025, AP. | “Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board Resignation Statement,” June 11, 2025, Substack. “Why the Fulbright Board Members Resigned in Mass Last Week,” June 17, 2025, PBS Newshour Interview with former Board member and Democratic Congressman from North Carolina David Price.

Lori A. Felton, “Educational and Cultural Exchange Is in Trouble,” June 6, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

“Enhancing National Security By Addressing Risks at Harvard University,” June 4, 2025, Proclamation by Donald Trump. | “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restricts Foreign Student Visas at Harvard University,” June 4, 2025, The White House.

David Bell, “Don’t Let Trump’s Brutality Fool You. The Internationalization of American Schools Is a Real Issue,” June 1, 2025, The New York Times. | Jim Geraghty, “The Big Business of Foreign Students at American Universities,” June 10, 2025, National Review. | “What International Students Bring to Campuses,” June 14, 2025, Letters, The New York Times.

Deborah Cohn, “Higher Education, Research, and the International Image of the United States in the Second Trump Administration,” June 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

US Agency for Global Media

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: The Dismantling of USAGM.

Jeffrey Trimble, “The Sound of Silence,” July 10, 2025, Substack.

Ben Johansen, “Embattled Voice of America Employees Face Termination ‘Whiplash,’” June 28, 2025, Politico.

Joel Simon, “A Secret Program Allowed VOA to Broadcast Television into North Korea. Now It’s Gone,” June 26, 2025, Columbia Journalism Review.

Kari Lake (USAGM), Prepared Statement, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 25, 2025. | Minho Kim and Megan Mineiro, “Trump Urges Congess to ‘Kill’ Voice of America as Its Leader Defends Gutting It,” June 25, 2026, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, “At Committee Hearing, Kari Lake Defends Dismantling VOA,” June 25, 2026, The Washington Post.

Tiffany Hsu, “As U.S. Dismantles Voice of America, Rival Powers Hope to Fill the Void,” June 24, 2025, The New York Times.

David Folkenflik, “Reporters for Voice of America and other U.S. Networks Fear What’s Next,” June 23, 2025, NPR. | Minho Kim, “Hundreds of Federal Workers at Voice of America Receive Layoff Notices,” June 20, 2025, The New York Times. | “Kari Lake Enforces President Trump’s Executive Order . . .” June 20, 2025, X. | Steve Herman, “Zombie Version of VOA Slain Again,” June 20, 2025, Substack.

Minho Kim and Chris Cameron, “Voice of America Recalls Staff for Iranian Language News Service From Leave,” June 13, 2025, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, “Voice of America Brings Back 75 Staffers Amid Iran-Israel Conflict,” June 13, 2025, The Washington Post.

USAGM Letters, Kari Lake to Senator James Risch and Office of CEO, June 3, 2024.

Sarah Ellison and Cate Cadell, “Chinese Propaganda Surges as the U.S. Defunds Radio Free Asia,” June 6, 2025, The Washington Post. | Liam Scott, “Q&A: Tamara Bralo on Fighting to Protect Radio Free Asia’s Journalists,” June 4, 2025, Columbia Journalism Review.

“EU Will Provide Emergency Funds to Help Keep Radio Free Europe Afloat After US Cuts,” May 20, 2025, AP.

US Agency for International Development

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: The Dismantling of USAID.

Christopher Flavelle, Nicholas Nehamas, and Julie Tate, “Missteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days that Doomed U.S.A.I.D.,” June 22, 2025; Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Malika Khurana, and Christine Zhang, “What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.,” June 22, 2025, The New York Times.

Dan Spokojny, “Why Philanthropy Should Help Build a Better State Department [in the wake of USAID’s closure],” June 3, 2025, The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

“Evaluation of the Department of State’s Approach to Realigning U.S. Agency for International Development Functions,” May 2025, Office of Inspector General, US Department of State. | Sean Michael Newhouse, “Potential Shortcomings in USAID-State Department Merger Raises Concerns,” June 3, 2025, Government Executive.

American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) — Union Busting

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: Union-Busting

Ralph R. Smith, “National Security vs. Union Rights: Court of Appeals Sides with National Security,” June 22, 2025, FedSmith.

Erich Wagner, “Appeals Court Issues Stay of Judge’s Decision Blocking Trump’s Anti-Union Order,” May 16, 2025, Government Executive.

Tom Arnold-Forster, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography, (Princeton University Press, 2025). The 20th century journalist, political theorist, and public intellectual Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) had a profound influence on theories of public opinion, liberalism, democracy, foreign affairs, media, communication, propaganda, public relations, and public diplomacy. Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century (1980, 1999), remains an indispensable account of his personal life and celebrated career. Now Arnold-Forster (Oxford University) has written a deeply researched biography grounded in assessments of ideas that shaped Lippmann’s thinking, his immense body of work, and the ways his writings influenced public debates in the past and resonate today. Diplomacy and media scholars will learn from Arnold-Forster’s close examination of Lippmann’s views on stereotypes, pseudo-environments, and the social psychology of opinion formation. His reconstruction of the Lippmann-Dewey debate on the problems of mediated complexity. And his in-depth analysis of Lippmann’s views on truth, journalism, propaganda, and free speech. He also credits Lippmann with an understanding of public diplomacy, although he never used the term. In his book, The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915), Lippmann called for “publicity” in world politics and a public facing “broader base for diplomacy.” For Arnold-Forster, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech framing US war aims, to which Lippmann contributed, was “a liberal manifesto for self-determination and public diplomacy.” A version of today’s societization of diplomacy can be found in Lippmann’s claim that “By increasing the number of people concerned in diplomacy, publicity, criticism, and discussion must follow.” The young Lippmann also wrote that “The real effect of democracy on foreign affairs will be to make them no longer foreign” (The Stakes of Diplomacy, 194 and 195).

Thomas Carothers, Rachel Kleinfeld, and Richard Youngs, “What Future for International Democracy Support,” Carnegie Endowment, July, 2025. Carnegie’s veteran democracy scholars and policy analysts take the measure of severe disruption in international democracy support and the Trump administration’s “radical deconstruction of U.S. aid and policies” as the major driver. The report divides into three parts. Part one examines the Trump administration’s actions and developments relating to other democracy donors. Part two looks at two trends: the rising assertiveness of authoritarian powers and the weakening of democracies from within. Part three analyzes major challenges in reimagining and renovating democracy support and a change agenda for moving forward. The authors understand that, as with other soft power instruments and institutions, the current disruption sits on longstanding organizational shortcomings and neglect of needed reforms in professional practice.

Senem B. Çevik, Gaye Aslı Sancar Demren, and Yaşar Şekerci, “Where Places of Worship Have No Congregation: Heritage Restoration in Turkey as Public Diplomacy,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, Published online, June 18, 2025, 1-20. Çevik (Woodbury University, Burbank, CA), Demren, and Şekerci (Galatasaray University, Istanbul) explore how Turkey uses heritage restoration as an instrument of public diplomacy and reputation management. Their article, grounded in strategic narrative theory and narratives of multiculturalism and coexistence, focuses on connections between heritage diplomacy, performative multiculturalism, and status-seeking in the context of public diplomacy. The authors advance their claims through a careful examination of four heritage restoration projects: two Jewish projects, the Edirne Grand Synagogue and the Bergama Synagogue, and two Armenian projects, Ani and Akhtamar Church of the Holy Cross (Surp Khatch). They argue that by reviving its multicultural heritage Turkey seeks to project an image of tolerance and inclusivity abroad and promote national unity and legitimacy domestically. They conclude, however, that while Turkey has invested significantly in cultural heritage projects, the impact on improved diplomatic relations with Israel and Armenia, and on better communal relations domestically, has been largely symbolic in the absence of substantive political commitments and concrete steps to address historical grievances. In addition to its careful research, their well written article contains an extensive list of references and thoughtful assessments of strategic narrative theory, reputation management, and public diplomacy’s foreign and expanding domestic dimensions.

Charlie English, The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature,(Random House, 2025). Through compelling stories written with the flair of an accomplished journalist, English (formerly, The Guardian) provides a vivid account of the CIA-financed book smuggling and printing activities led by the Romanian exile and CIA operative George Minden and courageous resisters in Europe. Based on extensive archival research and numerous in-depth interviews, English focuses his history on Poland and the careers of seven activists: Mirosław Chojecki, publisher and film producer; Helena Łuczywo, editor, Mazovia Weekly; George Minden; Jerzy Giedroyc, publisher, Literary Institute; Gregorz Boguta, publisher, NOWa; Marian Kaleta and Józef Lebenbaum, Sweden-based book distributors and smugglers; and Joanna Szczęsna, deputy editor, Mazovia Weekly. Other personalities and institutions appear throughout the book. Jan Nowak. Lech Walesa. Zbigniew Brzezinski. William Casey. Richard Pipes. Frankfort Book Fair. Samizdat. Voice of America. Radio Free Europe. Solidarity. And more. Technologies were different in this era before digitalization and before information scarcity gave way to information plenitude. But censorship, disinformation, book bans, and influence campaigns endure as instruments of political power. There are timely lessons in this account of what was achieved through books, globally sourced high-quality literature selected without regard to cultural imperialism, a belief in the value of “free, honest thinking,” and recognition that “soft power” can also be an effective instrument of political power.

Loso Judijanto and Nural Fadhilah, “The Evolution of Public Diplomacy: A New Strategy for Enhancing State Image,” Synergisia (SG), Vol. 2, No. 1, May 2025. Judijanto (IPOSS Jakarta) and Fadhilah (Universitas Muhammadiyah Luwuk) add to the growing Asian literature on public diplomacy in this open access article. They examine public diplomacy as “a subfield of political science and international relations” that evolved to include communication with foreign publics by state and non-state actors on a broad range of transborder political, economic, and social issues. Their objectives are to identify new and effective strategies for improving a country’s image, strengthening its soft power, and utilizing digital technologies and social media. Examples are drawn primarily from the public diplomacy practices of Ukraine, South Korea, China, Turkey, Qatar, and the European Union. The article includes an extensive list of references, much from non-Western sources.

Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The End of the American Century: Trump and the Sources of U.S. Power,” Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2025, 68-79. In this essay, longtime collaborators Robert Keohane (Princeton University) and the late Joseph Nye (Harvard University) advance two broad claims. First, by undermining interdependence and misusing the hard power associated with trade in erratic and counterproductive ways, President Trump is undercutting “the very foundation of American power.” Second, Trump’s policies are eroding America’s soft power in the short run and in what in the long run is a losing strategy. By weakening trust with allies, voicing imperial ambitions, destroying USAID, silencing the Voice of America, and challenging the rule of law at home he is recklessly “making a tragic bet on weakness,” not making America great again.

James Pamment and Darejan Tsurtsumia, Beyond Operation Doppelgänger: A Capability Assessment of the Social Design Agency (SDA), Psychological Defense Research Institute, Lund University. In this detailed report based on more than 3,000 leaked documents from the SDA and other sources, Pamment and Tsurtsumia (Lund University) assess Russia’s malign influence Doppelgänger campaign intended to undermine international support for Ukraine. The report examines the purpose and scope of the campaign, whose impact it considers to be overestimated, SDA’s capabilities, and its operations described as the use of mirror sites for disseminating disinformation against Western countermeasures levied on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The authors argue that SDA’s “goal became market share for the Russia Federation’s talking points regardless of framing and context.” It “doesn’t matter who is the messenger and what is the message, so long as the Russian Federation’s thematic lines seize a share of the marketplace of ideas.” The authors conclude their 215-page report with recommendations for addressing vulnerabilities and possible countermeasures.

Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier, (W.W. Norton, 2024). Parkinson (Binghamton University) has written a deeply researched account of imperial ambition, competing colonial land claims, ascendant violence, and diplomacy between colonists and Native Americans in the Ohio River Valley during the three decades (1763-1794) after the Seven Years War. Two themes frame the book. (1) The intertwined struggles of power centers in London and Paris, Williamsburg, Philadelphia and Albany, the Six Nations Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, and two families — the colonial Cresaps in western Maryland and Virginia and the Indigenous Shikellamy family in western Pennsylvania. (2) The “double dispossession” of Natives through their forceable removal and the intentional destruction of their history. Although the book focuses considerably on colonial and Native violence, it also provides fascinating accounts of diplomats representing the Six Nations Confederacy: the Oneida’s Scarouyady and Tachnedorous (John Logan Shickellamy), the Shawnee’s Cornstalk, and the Seneca’s Cornplanter and Guyasuta. Profiles of colonial diplomats include New York Indian Agent William Johnson and his deputy George Croghan, Pennsylvania Indian Agents Conrad Weiser and James Logan, and Virginia’s John Gibson. Parkinson adds considerably to our understanding of imperialism in frontier America and to the origins story of US diplomacy (and public diplomacy).

S. L. Price, “They Invented the Game. Now Will They Be Allowed to Play It In the Olympics?” New York Times Magazine, May 18, 2025, 29-37. As diplomacy becomes more societized, discourse on conceptual and operational questions continues to grow. Who is a diplomatic actor? What are the boundaries between diplomacy and other forms of cross-societal engagement? Why are some non-state actors independent diplomacy actors and others not? Author and former Sports Illustrated writer S. L. Price unintentionally provides grist for diplomacy scholars in his article on the Haudenosaunee Nationals lacrosse team’s so far unsuccessful bid to participate in the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) admitted lacrosse to the Games in 2023 after an 80-year absence, the Nationals – the talented team of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (formerly Iroquois) Confederacy – and other indigenous nations have been denied eligibility under the IOC’s interpretation of the Olympic Charter. The IOC contends that Haudenosaunee athletes can compete to play on the US or Canada’s teams. Price discusses the Haudenosaunee’s bid to participate, their efforts to influence public opinion, their meetings with President Biden and senior US officials, and briefly their autonomy as an Indigenous Nation recognized annually pursuant to a treaty signed by George Washington in 1794. The article is based on Price’s book, The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse, (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025).

Peter van der Knaap, “What Makes Diplomacy Successful?” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 20 (2025), 337-351, published online June 10, 2025. In this practitioner’s article, the director of the independent evaluation directorate (IOB) in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) examines criteria for evaluating successful diplomacy, provides an overview of the IOB’s structure and recent evaluations, and profiles a case study of Dutch diplomacy leading to avoidance of an oil spill in the Red Sea. The article’s primary focus is on factors contributing to effective diplomacy: mission, capacity, commitment, teamwork, timing, and reputations. Van der Knaap’s knowledgeable analysis of evaluation methods used by the foreign ministry of a middle power is a welcome contribution to the literature on evaluating diplomatic practice.

Vivian S. Walker, “The Propaganda Apocalypse,” The Foreign Service Journal, June 2025, 78-80.Walker (Georgetown University, Chair of FSJ’s Editorial Board) writes positive reviews of three books that stand out for their balanced and accessible analyses in the “firehouse of alarmist commentary on propaganda, disinformation, and fake news.” Sarah Oates and Gordon Neil Ramsay, Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News, (Oxford University Press, 2024). Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, (Public Affairs, 2024). Nancy Snow, Garth S. Jowett, and Victoria J. O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 8th edition, (Sage Publications, 2024). Walker provides informed summaries of their content and her overall assessment. Unlike much current literature, she concludes, they avoid “handwringing” and provide reasoned, evidence-based “approaches to defining propaganda’s scope, nature, and impacts.”